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Event DescriptionClosing Plenary: Roving Plenarists Present: ACP 2017 Roving Plenarists are the eyes and ears of the ACP whose role it is to be in and out of the seminars, attending the field sites, catching people in hallway conversation. On the last day of the campus, roving plenarists will present their findings.

Scott Gabriel Knowles
I am a historian focused on the interactions among technological change, disaster, and public policy. Most of my work has focused on the United States, though my involvement in the Anthropocene Campus grows from an eagerness to expand my geographical and conceptual range. I am very excited to meet and collaborate with new colleagues who are thinking about the Anthropocene in terms of transnational/global comparisons, particularly around the areas of expert communities and policy formation.

Scherer holds a doctoral degree in Philosophy from the Universität des Saarlandes and is author of several publications focussing on aesthetics and international cultural exchange. He comes to the Haus der Kulturen der Welt from the Goethe Institute, where he served as Director of the Goethe Institute Mexico from 1999 through 2004 and subsequently as Director of the Arts Department for the Head Office in Munich. Previously, Scherer headed the Department of Humanities and Culture at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and also served as its Deputy Director. The start of his directorship thus represents a return to an institution in which he from 1994-1999 played a decisive role with respect to organizational and artistic development.

Debjani Bhattacharyya, PhD
My current research addresses two broad questions: how environment and ecological formations shaped law and economy from the eighteenth century onwards; and how the contingencies through which legal and economic imaginaries developed and globalized across the world in turn reshaped colonial environments. In particular I am interested in tracing how the specific geography of the colony, its rivers, seas, swamps, deltas and seasons, which were different from the temperate climate of Europe, shaped the legal and economic technologies during the period of European expansion and came to occupy the position of universal knowledge and science. I explore these themes from a South Asian perspective, especially by focusing on the Bay of Bengal delta, one of the active deltas connecting India and Bangladesh.

Jesse Smith is a doctoral candidate in the history of sociology and science at University of Pennsylvania. More to come!

Yeonsil Kang
Yeonsil Kang, postdoctoral fellow, Catholic University, studies the intersection of environment, science and technology, and politics. She is especially interested in exploring the concept of slow disaster. Kang finds “slow disaster” insightful to the development of doctoral dissertation, which is about how people and the government reacted to the consequences of, and risk of asbestos exposure in South Korea. By understanding asbestos pollution and its aftermath as a slowly progressing disaster, an interesting dimension of time can be applied to her study. When does pollution start, and when and how does it end? Slow disaster concept will shed light on not only structural causes of pollution but also the infrastructure for recovery, including the legal and political system for compensation. Kang’s areas of interest include politics of environment and health; risk and hazard; Lay and expert knowledge; politics, engineering of nature.

Timothy Neale
Yeonsil Kang studies the intersection of environment, science and technology, and politics. She is especially interested in exploring the concept of slow disaster. Kang finds “slow disaster” insightful to the development of doctoral dissertation, which is about how people and the government reacted to the consequences of, and risk of asbestos exposure in South Korea. By understanding asbestos pollution and its aftermath as a slowly progressing disaster, an interesting dimension of time can be applied to her study. When does pollution start, and when and how does it end? Slow disaster concept will shed light on not only structural causes of pollution but also the infrastructure for recovery, including the legal and political system for compensation. Kang’s areas of interest include politics of environment and health; risk and hazard; Lay and expert knowledge; politics, engineering of nature.